


when blood meets water

by MercutioLives



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Blasphemy, Churches & Cathedrals, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heart-to-Heart, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Precognition, Religion, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 06:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13564836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercutioLives/pseuds/MercutioLives
Summary: After the quest for the Holy Grail deprives Mordred of his beloved, he finds himself adrift as he spirals toward his own dark destiny. In the midst of his struggle, he discovers comfort - as well as betrayal - in an unexpected form.





	when blood meets water

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the original draft of this piece during NaNoWriMo, and after several months of dilly-dallying, I finally decided to revise and polish it up.
> 
> The title of the fic comes from one of inkstay's [Dare To Write Challenge](http://inkstay.tumblr.com/post/143937584209/dare-to-write-challenge) prompts.

The stone church floor was hard and cold. Mordred could feel it scraping his knees raw even through the fabric of his trousers. Had he been in the company of others, or in less black of a mood, he might have joked about it to win some laughter. As it was, he had no desire for laughter today. This church, this so-called "House of God", was not his own, and he swore no oaths to the god for which it was built, yet here he knelt, the same as any Christian, before the altar which bore the image of the dying Christ. Unlike them, he did not bow his head in worshipful reverence, nor did he fold his hands in prayer. His eyes - the left one grey, the right one green - held the immobile, heavenward-cast eyes of Jesus Christ, daring Him silently to strike him down in His own dwelling-place. As expected, nothing happened, and he wasn't sure whether he felt relieved or disappointed. His knees ached against the stone as feeling leached out of his legs.

The silence of the chapel was broken by the opening of the heavy oaken doors, followed by the soft, delicate shuffle of several slippered feet. Mordred knew the sound of the Queen's footsteps well enough, though the realization had never occurred to him until now. Custom and etiquette demanded that he rise in her presence, and indeed he would have done so if his thoughts were in not so contrary a temperament, but she made no indication that his failure to pay her her due had slighted her in the least. In fact, she said nothing to him at all as she knelt beside him and crossed herself. The air hung still, and for a long while, the only sound was the whisper of prayers. Every now and again, Mordred glanced sidelong at his father's wife. At length, she finally spoke, her tone soft and congenial as it typically was.

"Good afternoon, Sir Mordred." Although she always referred to him by title when anyone else might hear, her inflection insinuated none of the staid formality she might have used with others. He turned his head just a fraction, and nodded acknowledgement.

"And to you, Your Grace." His voice was hoarse and his throat still ached from a long night of grief, but it was easy enough to pretend that he whispered out of respect for the church. Had it been anyone else beside him, he would not have bothered with the deception, though anyone else might have more readily believed it.

"You cannot imagine my surprise when I asked after your whereabouts, and this was the answer I was given. I suppose it would be too optimistic of me to hope that you came here to pray, so if I may inquire…?" A snort of derision waited at the back of his throat, but he didn't set it free. Instead, he lifted one shoulder in a lopsided shrug (a crude childhood habit he mostly pretended to have dispensed with, save in the odd private moment), and let the silence stretch on a little too long before he answered.

"I had thought, if I came here, I might learn why it was they were so eager to die for Him." He said  _ they _ , though what he really meant was  _ he: _ there was only one person for whom he cared enough to wonder at what drove him, but the pain was too raw yet to allow Mordred to speak of him to anyone else.

"And?" Guinevere prompted softly. "What did you learn?" Now the derision found its voice. He shook his head and gave a soft chuckle, its mirth replaced entirely by bitterness.

"I have never been inside this building, not once, since I first arrived in Camelot. I thought perhaps I might be missing something, some key piece of logic or mystery that they knew… But here I am, and all I see is a painting of a man inside a building created to glorify His suffering."

To her credit, Guinevere did not chide him or cross herself against his blasphemy, nor did she appear to be offended by Mordred's insult to her faith. When he finally looked at her fully, his wish to know how she would respond too great for even his anger at Christ to stand against, he saw a look of contemplation on her otherwise placid face. Even for one such as he, who felt neither desire nor romantic love for women, there was no denying that she was beautiful. Fine-boned and fair, with something of the look of a bird about her, she quite frankly put to shame the beauty of any other woman in the kingdom. As a child, he had thought his mother the loveliest woman in all the realm, and perhaps she had been while she lived, but the difference between Morgause and Guinevere was as complete as that between night and day.

Morgause was dark-haired, a trait she shared with her eldest son, and wore her beauty like a suit of armor: it gave an edge to her fearsomeness that could never be borne by a man, and in that fearsomeness she had gained a kind of respect. It stood in stark contrast to Guinevere's more delicate aspect which, though it had nothing of the weapon in it, was no less arresting to the eye. As he looked at her, Mordred could feel the difference, and wondered - had he chosen to deny his nature - whether he would have chosen for himself his mother's armor or his stepmother's serenity. It was a futile line of thought, for there was no changing what he was and he had no desire to do so, but there it sat nonetheless.

"Is there anything in this world that you would die for, if you were called to it? Something which would be impossible for you to explain to anyone who has never known it?" While her tone of voice was as composed as ever, there was something in it that suggested she already knew the answer. Mordred's throat tightened, and he bowed his head at last, though it was not out of reverence for God.

"Not anymore. I had once, but he's gone now, for love of Christ and His suffering." As with his blasphemy, Guinevere offered no rebuke for his mildly treasonous words: as a sworn knight of the Round Table, he ought to have proclaimed his willingness to die for his king, but both of them knew better. Anyone who knew as well as they did the prophecy which followed Mordred like a shade would know better. Mordred could not die for Arthur, so it was just as well that he didn't want to. Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to speak the name of the one for whom he would have laid down his life, and he was grateful when she did not ask him to do so. He couldn't help but suspect that it was due as much to her own lingering bitterness toward Galahad's existence as Lancelot's son as to her sympathy for Mordred's grief, though she gave no indication of the former. Even so, he couldn't take it personally: he was no stranger to the envy one felt when the love and recognition one wanted for oneself was lavished upon another.

"But you know the feeling. They who sought the Grail felt the very same. It was their calling, the one thing they could do to express their devotion, and so they did it."

Mordred said nothing for long enough that, at length, Guinevere crossed herself once again and rose to her feet. The movement was fluid and graceful despite her heavy skirts. When she did, Mordred also stood, no longer in good conscience able to excuse any recalcitrance. The Queen's ladies-in-waiting were all clustered together at the back of the chapel, though whether it was to give the two of them some modicum of privacy or out of apprehension toward him Mordred could not say, nor did he care. Had they been closer, however, the words that next flew from his mouth surely would not have come quite so readily.

"I sat in his seat once, before he came." He had never meant to tell anyone, but the manner in which it clambered up out of him sounded - and felt - much like a confession. Guinevere made a small sound of incomprehension, begging without words for him to clarify.

"Siege Perilous. I sat in it once, before -" Even now, his throat closed upon the name. "Before  _ he  _ arrived. I knew the tales, and had seen one man die from sitting there, but I was too curious to know whether it was stronger than prophecy. Or fate. So… I sat. I sat for a long while, actually. Nearly half an hour, now that I think on it, and I'm still here." His breath quivered and his jaw ached in the way it sometimes did when one was fighting too hard to hold back tears. There was a pause almost a beat too long before he continued.

"I could have claimed it for myself, saved him from it, but I knew better. I knew it wasn't because I was some holy knight, blessed by God, and my pride was too strong to pretend. I sit up at night wondering… Had I known then how much I would love him, would I have done it anyway? Would it have been enough to keep him from throwing his life away on that damned useless quest? And why did I not See him, not once, when visions of every other kind plague me without end?"

As he spoke, Guinevere had kept a slight distance between them, watching her stepson and taking stock of the way in which he seemed to shrink further in upon himself with each word. Now, she closed that distance and folded her arms about his narrow shoulders. He didn't resist, though his arms remained stiff at his sides. They were of a height, so when Mordred's head came to rest upon her shoulder, he didn't have to stoop down. His eyes were dry still, but he pressed his face into the crook of her neck all the same, feeling much like a child seeking the comfort of its mother. Truly, though she had no cause to love him, she'd always treated him as much like her own son as any woman could. More than Morgause ever had, at any rate. The only other person to hold him like this had been the old fishwife who'd found him as a baby, his first mother and perhaps his truest. There was no similarity between her embrace and Guinevere's, save that they were both given out of love. Mordred himself was no good at displaying the sort of filial affection that his stepmother deserved, but she never seemed to mind it.

She stroked his hair, in full view of her women and Christ, and Mordred shut his eyes with a shuddering sigh. It felt like half an age before he finally pulled away. He hadn't shed a single tear, but felt as exhausted and as relieved as if he'd sobbed for hours. Under Guinevere's affectionate gaze, he kissed her hand in a manner that was neither perfunctory nor ironic.

"Thank you, madam. As ever, you have been most generous in your counsel." He struggled to rein in his sudden surge of emotion. Guinevere smiled, as she always did when he tried to hide his feelings behind courtly manners, and placed her fingers beneath his beardless chin, tilting his face up so that their eyes met. He couldn't bring himself to return her smile, though something within him softened when she leant forward to kiss his brow. When she gave him a knowing nod, he wondered, not for the first time, if she didn't possess something of the Sight herself. He knew better than to suggest such a thing, but the question always returned when that look of silent understanding crossed her face.

The Queen gestured to her ladies, and with them took her leave of the church, leaving Mordred behind feeling - somehow - both less and more uncertain than he had before. He took one last, uncertain look at the altar before quitting the chapel himself. He decided that he would never return there if he could help it. There was nothing within those walls for him except judgment and unanswerable questions.


End file.
